


though the battlefield would be calling

by killaidanturner



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Fix-It, Non-Linear Narrative, Reincarnation, Slow Burn, pre-Justice League
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-10 11:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11125872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: It’s year ninety-eight that really does her in. She’s on the streets of Metropolis, all sharp lines and angles, looking more like a permanent fixture of the city, a sweeping skyscraper, when she thinks she sees Steve walking down the street.It’s not the first time this has happened, in the first year, in the first year it was unbearable, she saw him in every uniform that passed her, in every hat tilted too far down with a sharp jaw hidden underneath, in any American accent she heard in Europe.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Themyscira was the definition of beauty and Diana had beheld it her whole life, from the sweeping green hills to the clear water shores. She had always known its technicolor hues, she has never longed to leave it, never asked what was beyond the shore, but at night when the waves crashed, she heard their siren call, “Diana, Diana, Diana.”

 

* * *

 

It was watching the Amazons from the hilltop that made her feel like she fit in. It always made her think of the story that her mother told her at night, and made her wish that perhaps if she wasn’t sculpted from clay she would fit in more, that she would be the same flesh, the same blood, that her body would twist and bend the same way as others in a fight. That is how she came to watch them, with determination to be them.

 

It wasn’t always about being in a war like her mother thought it was, it was about being a part of something.

 

* * *

 

She grows, and grows, and grows, and at night, in the morning, and at every moment she can steal, she trains. With each blows she feels more exhilarated than the last. She feels like she belongs, even if it is in secret.

 

* * *

 

Everyone is looking at her like she's an outsider, like what she has thought all along has been true, and it’s everything that Diana never wanted. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone, she didn’t mean for the cuffs to cause a blast. She just wanted to train, to be one, and she feels like it’s already been ripped out from under her.

 

She goes to the cliffs, where the ocean is at high tide and she hears the waves shouting her name.

 

* * *

 

It’s his eyes she notices, how they are the same color of the sky she has always looked at. She flashes back to him falling out of the sky, trapped in steel, and wonders if that is where he comes from, if that is why his eyes are the same color. She can feel it in her fingertips, on the tip of her tongue, catching in her throat, that she wants to ask him this, _if there are no gods left then who made you?_

 

It’s only a moment of his fumbling, of his awe, that she realizes that he is not a god but a man, and somehow she finds that so much more interesting.

 

The smile from her lips is pulled too quickly, men rush the shore, firing things that Diana has never seen. She watches, watches as horses come riding in, as Amazons, filled with grace, fight their dying breaths.

 

Afraid, she doesn’t think it is what she feels as she watches the scene unfold, more so she feels worried, worried for her kind, worried for her mother, worried if she steps from behind the rock that she will not be the thing that she has trained to become.

 

* * *

 

 

Diana stands on the steps next to her mother, hair falling out from its neatly tied braid. When the lasso goes around the man’s hands, gold light reflecting off of him, Diana thinks he looks about the same color, golden hues and cutting cheeks casting shadows.

 

It’s when he speaks of The War, that she knows what she must do. She feels it stir in her blood, lightning quick. All she knows is that she must do something, anything, to make it stop. She wonders to herself, how something made of clay, could feel so much. It’s on the steps that Hippolyta knows that she has lost Diana.

 

* * *

 

At night his eyes stay the same color as the sky during the day, Diana finds herself a bit disappointed, expecting them to change with the sky. She doesn’t need to say goodbye to the stars of Themyscira, instead she keeps her eyes on him until she feels sleep wanting to take over.

 

* * *

 

This, the crunch of gravel beneath her feet, bullets ricocheting off her cuffs, are not the drums of war she longed for as a child. This is screaming madness, it’s hurt personified, and Diana can’t distinguish the ache in her chest from missing the quiet shores of Themyscira or the dying men around her.

 

* * *

 

At night, they're laying side by side, and Diana smiles because even in the dark she can still see the brightness of his eyes, and how they remind her a bit of home. 

 

"I'm lucky you found me." Steve Trevor doesn't believe in fate, doesn't believe in gods or magic, but he finds himself asking, "Why were you at the beach that day?" His voice is quiet as his fingers lightly trace the sharp cut of her cheekbone.

 

"I heard the waves calling my name." 

 

And the thing is, he believes her. 

 

* * *

 

She can feel every beat of her heart as the plane explodes, feel the rushing in her ears as she breaks the steel from around her.

 

She can feel the lightning coursing through her veins, feel the power of it, raw and burning. This, this is what she was made for, gods were made for war. She is not afraid of what she has become, not of the power that she knows can consume, not when she knows there is still hope, that there was, is, love in her heart. Her battle cry is loud and shattering, it’s fiercer than any she’s ever heard, it makes her brave.

 

* * *

 

After, after her fingers trace the shape of his jaw on a photograph, black and white and lacking all of his vibrancy. But Diana still finds herself _missing._

 

* * *

 

The world is filled with too many wars, too many tragedies and Diana realizes that she cannot stop them all.

 

If she did, she can imagine Steve behind her in all of them, his foot falls close with a gun in his hand as he helps her push on. In these dreams they are together, in these dreams at the end, he puts his hand in hers.

 

* * *

 

The first year is the hardest. At night trash can lids in alleys sound like metal hitting metal, sound like gunshots, and Diana wonders if it's ever truly possible to leave a war or if it's always looming. Looming the way that the Amazons were always training, always ready for a battle that was never going to reach them.

 

* * *

 

The sun never rises the same as it did in Themyscira. There it was always the same gold and yellow breaking over the horizon, but out there it is shades of red, violent and bleeding as it cuts across the fog.

 

* * *

 

By the second world war she has faded, she has felt the color slip from her fingers as she hears of all the deaths, and the numbers that keep accumulating.

 

When she falls to her knees, it is not with a hard impact, it is not with the intentions of defending herself. Her shield is not at her side, instead when she falls to her knees, it is because she doesn’t know how to feel things in small fractions, instead she feels them magnified, and she wonders when the feeling of loss will finally be less.

 

* * *

 

It takes thirty more years but the world is looking colorful again, and she takes in interest in how people are wanting to change. She smiles when she sees hands being held, when she sees flowers tucked behind ears, grass that grows so high it hits knees. Even after all this time she is still filled with wonder as she feels flickers of love and hope grow within her again.

 

* * *

 

Thirty more years pass and she’s thankful that she hasn’t stayed anywhere long enough for them to realize that she doesn’t age, that her skin will never wrinkle or her hairs never gray. She’s grateful for it in the same way that she does not have any friends, that she will not have to watch anyone age, will not have to see them slowly slip away from her as times slow hands reach for them.

 

* * *

 

Bruce Wayne doesn’t intrigue her enough to stay, not even if he has something of hers. She figures she can get it back another way, that no man can take what is hers.

 

* * *

 

It’s on the plane that she realizes that she’s made a mistake, that the creature attacking the city is too much for them to handle. She makes a decision, then and there, and she feels electricity crack in her fingers.

 

“Ms.Prince!” She hears the attendant calling after her. This plane is not like the shores of Themyscira, her parting is not the same, but for the first time in years, she feels purpose again.

 

* * *

 

The sword feels the same in her hands, light weight and cutting.

 

She thought that this, fighting a battle, would call forth all of the thing that she has neglected, the years she could have been helping, saving, but it does not. It’s not the burden she thought it was going to be, instead it’s something more glorious, something she feels is more fitting.

 

She smiles as her back hits a large piece of fallen rubble, her bones don’t crack or break, instead her muscles are starting to feel properly used again. A fire burns in her, starting in the pit of her stomach and working its way outwards, and not for the first time does she remember that gods are made for war.

 

* * *

 

She makes an agreement, tells Bruce that she’ll help, when really this is what she’s wanted to do all along. In a way she hates that it has taken her so many years but Diana is not one to be filled with regrets. Instead she forgives herself for the years she remained dormant, there is no point in holding onto a guilt that she can do nothing about. She knows now that she cannot change the past but she vows to change the future.

 

* * *

 

Bruce agrees to return to photo to her, in it’s full condition, and not just a copy through email. He doesn’t ask her about who is in the photo with her, but she can see it lingering behind his eyes, how they flicker back and forth as if trying to find the answers within her own.

 

Her eyes tell a different story, one that urges him not to ask any questions. She doesn’t want to have to explain the past few decades, she doesn’t want to say that the men in the picture were good men and one of them in particular deserved more even though some things in this world weren’t about deserving.

 

She doesn’t want to have to say that the first year was the hardest, that she thought she saw him wherever she went. She doesn’t want to say that since fighting that alien creature, that monstrous thing, that it is starting to feel like the first year all over again.

 

* * *

 

It’s year ninety-eight that really does her in. She’s on the streets of Metropolis, all sharp lines and angles, looking more like a permanent fixture of the city, a sweeping skyscraper, when she thinks she sees Steve walking down the street.

 

It’s not the first time this has happened, in the first year, in the first year it was unbearable, she saw him in every uniform that passed her, in every hat tilted too far down with a sharp jaw hidden underneath, in any American accent she heard in Europe. It was consuming, to the point where she never stopped moving, from train to boat to plane, anywhere that she wasn’t touching the ground, anything so she wouldn’t think she heard him. It was too much for her heart to take, and in those moments she would hold the watch up to her ear, listen to it’s ticking and count down the moments until she came back to herself.

 

But for the first time she thinks that this is it, that he is here, and maybe he is the one made of clay. Maybe the gods are still out there and they heard how much she still wanted this, even after all of these years, and that her wish finally came true.

 

She tells herself _no, not now,_ not when she’s ready to defend the world again. That she doesn’t need him, but she finds herself wavering on how much she wants this to be real, even after she had told herself all those years ago that it's impossible. How much she wants this, to hear his voice shout “Diana!” as she steps onto the battlefield.

 

It’s like the first time all over again, she finds her feet betraying her as they slam down against the concrete. She’s running too hard, too fast, filled with so much want, that she doesn’t realize with each footfall the pavement cracks.

 

She’s quick, and can dodge around the crowd but people see her coming, look at the ground underneath her and are moving out of the way. She realizes the scene she is making, slows her pace a bit, is aware of her strength and begins to draw less attention to herself.

 

 _I can’t be wrong, not this time._ It’s the way his shoulders are squared, his hands relaxing at his sides as he takes a look up at the sky that she knows it’s him.

 

“Steve!” The word sounds so foreign on her tongue, strange and unfamiliar, like she was learning to say it for the first time.

 

He turns around, a look of confusion on his face, eyebrows raised as he takes her in. Her cheeks and nose are red from the wind blowing against her, her curls loose and flowing, cascading off her shoulders. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

 

Her face immediately falls, the smile gone as she realizes that this man before her, this exact replica, cannot possibly be him.

 

“I mean, sorry not to be rude, my name is Steve but I’m used to everyone calling me Trevor.”

 

It sparks something inside of her, that he has the same name. She’s trying to listen to him but her mind is whirling, trying to pull up ancient texts, trying to come to a conclusion here on the concrete as to why any of this would even make sense.

 

She plays it off, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we met before. I’m certain we must have, otherwise how would I know your name?” Diana has been in the world long enough to know how to play the game, to know how to appeal to certain sides of men, and when she reaches out gently, her hand resting on his forearm as he smiles at her. She thinks she does this action more for herself than for him, to assure herself that he’s really standing in front of her and she hasn’t conjured the whole thing up.

 

His smile grows wider causing his eyes to wrinkle, and she feels herself falter, feels her heart miss a measure because this is him, she knows it the same way she knows that she is the daughter of Zeus, a weapon forged to protect.

 

“Well, I’m starting to think that we may know each other. What did you say your name was?” On this cold, windy, Metropolis day, his eyes remind her of the sky in Themyscira, and she finds herself whispering, “Diana Prince.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She does find it peculiar, that today of all days, that the watch would stop working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! thank you so much for all the nice words about this story

When she tells him her made up last name of Prince, his smile gets even wider, “That’s an uncommon last name,” and for the first time in years she remembers how it came to be.

 

“But Diana, that’s,” he looks away at the skyline, at the ever changing colors stretching across the sky scrapers, he feels nervous and can’t fully understand why. She’s beautiful, of course she’s beautiful, but her smile is radiant and he tries to place the last time he saw something so bright in this chrome city. “That’s a beautiful name.” He says Diana like it’s something soft and delicate when the last time she heard it from his lips it was urgent and cutting.

 

Diana who is used to the flattery of men, used to how easily they say such frivolous words and don’t understand their true meaning feels the same fire kindling low in her stomach at _beautiful._

 

They stay there like that, unmoving, for what is at this point considered socially unacceptable. The spell seems to temporarily break as he clears his throat and looks down at his shoes. When Steve, _Trevor_ , Diana reminds herself as he looks back up. “I’m just trying to figure out where I know you from.”

 

“Perhaps a Gala, I tend to get invited to a few of them between here and Gotham.”

 

“Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I just feel like I would remember someone like you.” Steve rocks back on the heels of his feet as he looks up at the sky once more. He finds it hard to keep his eyes directly on her. It feels too much like looking straight into a light.

 

“Perhaps there were other influences that night.” Diana’s lips quirk at the sides and she hopes that it’s enough to get him to believe it.

 

“That’s a big possibility considering that I hate going to those things.”

 

They both share a small laugh. “Which Gala was it? I don’t think it was for the fund raiser for the new modern art museum?”

 

“Oh no, you wouldn’t want to see me at something like that. No, the most recent one I went to was actually a Captain’s Ball, it was being funded by Wayne Enterprises for making, who knows, some sort of technological advancement for the military.”

 

 _A Captain's Ball?_ It’s all slotting too perfectly into place.

 

“You’re a military man then?” Her voice has dropped an octave, dropping some of her show as she becomes more questioning.

 

“Captain Steven Trevor of the United States Armed Forces, at your service.” He feels ridiculous saying out loud, as if a title would even begin to impress a woman like this.

 

Diana falls right back into it, lightly slapping her head like it was in there the whole time. “You’re right, that was it! I’m glad one of us was able to figure it out. Mr.Wayne throws so many events they all just kind of blur together.”

 

It’s funny, she thinks, that old Steve would have gotten a kick out of this, watching her play the spy as she forces a laugh.

 

“I feel like I should get your number.” It’s abrupt and even catches Steve off guard.

 

Diana stands up a bit straighter, her mask falling off and being replaced by one that is a little more carved of stone. “You won’t need it.” She doesn't say it because she doesn't intend to not see him again, because she does, she can feel herself already two steps ahead, trying to figure out when she will see him again. 

 

The silence falls back over them as Steve pushes his hands into his pockets.  “You know my father used to tell me a story about how in 1953 we started naming hurricanes after women. It was interesting that they picked only women's names at the time, but they started naming them so the wreckage after the storm could be measured. Perhaps I will see you at another event, Diana Prince.”

 

He's taken her denial as rejection and walks past her on the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving hers until she would have to turn around to be able to see him. He doesn’t know why he says goodbye that way, when moments before he found it so hard to look at her. There was something about her towards the end that made him feel more determined.

 

Diana stays like that on the sidewalk, standing on the corner of an intersection as people walk past her, moving around her like she's a greek statue. As if her likeness was cast and set in the courts of Themyscira. It snaps her out of it, the thought of this particular expression on her face among the great Amazons.

 

If she herself didn’t know any better she would think that she had become one.

 

* * *

 

 “Storms? Really?” Steve shakes his head as he walks through the doors to Wayne Enterprises Metropolis office.

 

Ever since the Incident, which is what the media is referring to the giant mutation alien attack that killed Superman, the city has needed to be rebuilt.

 

The sun shines through the all glass building causing a glow off the marbled floor. For a shining moment, so brief he almost doesn't know how he conjures the image, he imagines Diana with a halo of light behind her, so bright that it's almost hard to make out her sharp features.

 

He stops in his tracks, caught off guard. He closes his eyes a second too long, trying to pull the image into a clearer focus but it slips away. He looks around the lobby area, trying to see if anyone noticed his indiscretion. Everyone seems to be unaware of his presence so he keeps moving to the elevator, heading to the floor where the cities main team is stationed for the planning on rebuilding.

 

It’s going to take more than a village to rebuild. It’s taking city officials, state officials, a ridiculous amount of fundraising, which unfortunately has fallen into Steve’s lap.

 

“Why?!” Steve asked his commanding officer when he had told him he had been chosen to be the poster boy for the cause.

 

“We need someone likeable, someone that can help earn us donations. We can’t rely on Bruce Wayne for everything, he’s a busy man. Besides, there’s no point for us to actually be out digging through the rubble, you’re not an archeologist.”

 

“I’m also not an, an,” Steve is stumbling as he looks for a word, “escort.” He blindly throws the word out there but even he can tell that his defense was weak. 

 

His commanding officer doesn’t even look up from his documents as he replies, “you would be so lucky that someone would pay money to spend time in your company. You’ll do as you're being asked. We are stationed in Metropolis for now, this is where are orders are, and we will do what needs to be done.”

 

Steve is still shaking his head when the elevator doors close, wondering why he thinks that Diana is similar to a hurricane.

 

* * *

 

 Rarely does she allow herself this, access to her memories, back to a time when she was filled with a love that sunk bone deep, back to when she let her curiosity roam wild. Unaware of what laid beyond the shores.

 

She doesn’t like the feeling of letting the world fall away. That serpentine feeling moments before a memory is about to surface.

 

Tonight is different.

 

She wants to go back to that night on the boat, the one where she was asking Steve to sleep next to her. She realizes now how young she was, how absolutely careless. She would never do that now, let a stranger be so close, but back then, she looked at him the same way she looked at the stars, filled with curiosity and a knowledge that there was something more.

 

She lays down on the bed, her hands folded neatly across her stomach. She kicks her heels off trying to get more comfortable. She thinks that if she’s laying down, imagining it exactly how it happened, then the memory will hurt less.

 

What happens instead is that she goes too far back. What happens is that she can feel sand beneath on her knees and blood on her hands.

 

“God Killer.” Antiope used her last words, ghosting over Diana’s flesh.

 

Diana sits up on the bed, back in her apartment, heart racing fast. She wishes that then, in that moment, that she understood, that she knew the weight of those words. Her time would have been different during the war then, she would not have been as foolish? No, brave. She thinks she would not have had the same kind of courage, that instead she would have been just as war hungry as Ares.

 

Because she didn’t understand the implication of those words at the time, she is left with different memories. She is left with snowflakes on her eyelashes and Steve’s hands calloused from his gun, from climbing trenches, running down the curve of her cheek.

 

She is left with love, endless and unbounding.

 

She is left with time.

 

* * *

 

With her restlessness she opens up her computer. The mail icon goes off in the corner indicating a new email. It’s her private account that not a lot of people have so she already knows that whoever it is from it is most likely important.

 

 **From:** Bruce Wayne

 

_I see that you’re still in metropolis._

 

Bruce Wayne is always teetering on the edge of secrets. The man who has everything is missing this piece about Diana and because of that she holds it close to her. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him, ok that’s part of it.

 

Once when he had asked her about her past, Bruce leaning back in a chair in front of too many surveillance cameras, hands resting on his knees as Diana stood in front of him, her eyes not leaving the cameras, had replied.

 

“When I first met you, you were trying to kill Clark Kent.”

 

It twists the knife that he’s pretending isn’t in him, how Clark’s death looms like the darkest part of night. He rocks in the chair once, his fingers moving momentarily, going to grasp at something but he doesn’t know what. He relaxes them, rests them back into their position, and hopes Diana doesn’t notice.

 

She does. Her eyes have already flicked back to the cameras.

 

“That was different, I was different. There were things that I didn’t understand.” His adam’s apple moves too much, like he’s throats dry, like he’s swallowing sand. It’s hard for him to admit when he’s wrong, she knows this and takes just that much more pleasure in getting him to do so.

 

She doesn’t like bringing Clark up either, not when the only thing that she knew about him was that he held onto hope the way that she used to, the way that Steve did. She doesn’t like making comparisons but standing on his mother’s farm, grass up to her knees, she thought she could feel the sun of Themyscira again, thought that she was young and running through the fields wishing for something more. It causes an indescribable ache to imagine a young Clark running on the farm, running too fast, too hard, and just wanting to fit in.

 

Diana gets the urge to shift on her feet, to take the weight of the uncomfortable silence that has fallen between her and Bruce and readjust it on her shoulders.

 

“I know, but what I am saying is, that he and I were not that different. Maybe one day I will tell you Mr.Wayne but today is not that day.”

 

She looks at her computer screen, the bright white light illuminating her small office.

 

Diana rolls her eyes, irritated at Bruce’s ever watchful eye. She curses herself for thinking that this could possibly be something important.

 

_I don’t see how that is any of your concern._

 

 **From** : Bruce Wayne

 

_Just stating a fact was all. I thought you said you hated Metropolis?_

 

Her fingers are quick as she replies.

 

_No, I said I hated Gotham. Metropolis is a lot quieter._

 

She contemplates for a moment telling him that she has found an artifact, something to throw him off the trail. She still does work for museums and it would be perfectly logical for her to still be here if it was for a piece. She also doesn’t say it’s quieter now because Superman is gone, that there is a certain silence that has befallen the city, one that no one had suspected. There was an assumption that it would turn into Gotham, that the city would breathe darkness. Instead it remained quiet, almost making the city seem like it was standing still.

 

Diana decides not to bring up Clark, not again. It’s strategic, she knows it, but there are still things that she doesn’t know about Bruce and wants to keep her cards close to her chest.

 

Bruce doesn’t respond after her last reply so Diana closes her laptop.

 

Not for the first time, she pulls out the watch that she has carried all of these years. Even though she has regularly restored the watch, she finds that it is no longer ticking. She turns the watch over in her hands a few times, as if this simple gesture would get the watch ticking again.

 

There was a brief time in Diana’s life when the thick leather band rested against her skin. Even when it wasn’t working and strangers would point it out when they would ask her for the time, she would simply smile, and reply “I know” before gently touching the band.

 

She does find it peculiar, that today of all days, that the watch would stop working.

 

Diana debates about researching this, she doesn’t know what to call him besides his name, about researching Steve Trevor. The idea tosses around in her mind as she sits at her desk, turning her chair side to side as she thinks, as if the simple swaying motion would help her come to a decision. She doesn't allow herself to believe that the man she met today was him, her Steve. No, that seems too easy. More so it seems too dangerous, like how men have no choice but to sleep in trenches, bullets flying past as they try to find rest. 

 

After minutes of this she decides better of it, that digging into this is something for another day, something for when she doesn’t feel war torn.

 

The watch rests on the night stand next to the bed, her eyes looking at the face, the hands perfectly still. The curtains are open on her bedroom window allowing the city lights and full moon to cast a bluish hue across her sheets. It reminds her of the memory she was trying so desperately to find.

 

Her hand reaches out grabbing the watch off of the table, the crown of the watch scraping against the wood.

 

She falls asleep with the watch in her hands, with her dreams chasing a memory like a boat looking for shore.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who are you Diana?”
> 
> “I have been many people in the lifetime that you have left me.” Her voice bleeds sadness but her eyes never break away from his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kind of struggled with this chapter

Steve doesn’t remember dying but at night when he closes his eyes, he sees constellations behind his eyelids.

 

* * *

 

In the sky there are gods begging for a tragedy, for Andromeda to be devoured. In the sky there are heroes and monsters. In the sky there are stories that Diana knows more about than the literature written about them. In the sky the stars tell of the past. In the sky the stars that make up Ares fade, their light long since perished but still reaching earth.

 

In the stars are things that she does not talk about. The stars don’t understand her want, and want is a hard thing to describe because want is a creature that takes many shapes and lives many lives.

 

* * *

 

The images blur until they come into focus like fever relief. She dreams of the night that Steve kissed her collarbones, kissed her skin like he was shaping her into something new. Kissed her lips like he was breathing new life into her. Her skin still remembers the sharp cut of his jaw, the crook of his neck as she breathed against his skin, her tongue tasting of salt and how it reminded her of the ocean.

 

Her fingertips were like vines, how they reached for him. The soft cotton of his shirt, the freckles that dusted his cheeks the way that stars dust the sky.

 

Then in the dream it's the next morning, that morning there was the sun breaking through the clouds and everything seemed to be drenched in gold, no longer desaturated and miserable. Where they are both wrapped in light as if the sun was welcoming them home.

 

It is not the first time that she has searched for him in her sleep. She has drawn lines on maps, crossed oceans, built bridges, but always they disappear but every once in awhile they allow her this, this specific dream. Even in her dreams she knows that her destination is not a place but instead a person.

 

In the dream it always plays out the same, exactly how it did that night. First snow, first slow dance, when piano keys weren’t just piano keys but instead the first act.

 

Diana thinks she could count every heart beat between that moment and now because her heart lets nothing die, it fights small wars inside her chest. In a way it is cruel because always when she wakes the next day she is filled with a sorrow that could level mountains.

 

There are no photo albums, no relics of the years that have gone by. Diana is meticulous, careful to leave nothing behind and to only take with her memories. But there was always the watch, never too far out of her reach. There is a reason that it is the only thing that she has allowed herself. It is because memories are attached to items and in this one, this one she always loses him.

 

Now she lays awake in the morning sun, her eyes lingering on it, not really looking at the faded face plate. Her eyes are out of focus as she thinks about how she was never able to let this go.

 

She tried to let go of the war, tried to let go during the celebration, after her fingers ran down the photo of Steve in front of his plane. She remembers the feeling of completing her purpose, the Amazons purpose standing there in the streets of London. That was the only thing that she let go that day, the only relief that she allowed herself with bodies cheering and pushing against her. She allowed herself that brief moment of solace, welcoming the sound of happiness and love to fill her ears and replace the sound of fear.

 

She would never deny Steve the choice that he made, always showing up right when Diana needed that last push. Always when she thought that she was on her own. She would never deny him standing there on the tarmac, the words _I love you_ cascading past his lips as if it was more matter of fact, knowing, knowing, knowing, they would be his last. The importance of it clung to her amor, settled in as if it were extra steel to protect her. He made the decision, to be the good that she still wanted to believe in, and she would never want to take that away but she would be lying if she said that she has never thought about different outcomes. She would be lying if she said she never thought of running faster than him, jumping into the plane, and causing an explosion. She knows she would have survived it, knows it in her heart, but then she remembers how Charlie had run out of bullets, how the men put their heads together knowing that they would die. That is the part that catches her, she can’t clearly see an outcome where Steve doesn’t die with them, the only difference is this time his death is on the ground and she still loses him.

 

Charlie who sang, sang for her, and even sang after the war. Who’s pub days turned less violent and more melodic. Sameer and his many voices, and how he told Diana he was going to plant a tree in his yard because at least there would be something alive after all of the war's horrors had died.

 

Her memories of Steve are flickering, flickering in the way that he reminded her of hope, with his unwavering faith in humanity. The way that he said I love you in all its simplicity and how she should have shouted it back like a war cry.

 

She knows that she cannot turn away, that she has done it once before and lost her home. Made herself impossible to find. Chased grief away with knowledge but never found it in her heart to stand side by side with the world of men once more.

 

Not until she saw that photo of Steve looking back at her from her computer screen.

 

This is how she decides to stay.

 

 

* * *

 

It comes to Steve as a mosaic.

 

He dreams of her that night. He dreams of her hair slipping through his hands like sand. He doesn’t know why he keeps imagining her with water, with waves at their ankles, but the idea is there creating whirlpools in his mind. The light halves and looks like a crown upon her head.

 

“Who are you Diana?”

 

“I have been many people in the lifetime that you have left me.” Her voice bleeds sadness but her eyes never break away from his.

 

He wakes without understanding.

 

* * *

 

Steve goes through the day feeling empty, down in the pit of his stomach. He tries to pass it off as hunger but he knows that it’s something more. He thinks it's ridiculous that he is acting this way over a woman, over a dream, an idea that's already sunk into his bones.

 

The day passes with a hundred sounds, he feels almost in a dream like state. He feels like he should know that it’s absurd, this feeling that he’s always been looking for something but never being able to place what. There’s an answer lying behind Diana’s eyes, locked behind her lips, and he just thinks if he could see her again then it will feel like the whole damn world is beaming back at him.

 

* * *

 

Diana needs to distract herself. She goes to Bruce, telling him that she decided to stay because she figured he could use some of her help trying to find metahumans.

 

It doesn’t take long for her to be in his presence before he starts bringing up the past, asking questions like they’re in an interrogation room.

 

“I thought that you wanted that photo because you were trying to hide yourself. I thought that has to be it, she doesn’t want the world to know of her existence. It still didn’t make sense to me, until you sent that email back, and you said thank you for bringing him back to me. Who was he Diana?”

 

“You already know the answer.” Whereas Bruce thinks Diana was so adamant to get retrieve the photo to protect her identity it is really because even after all this time she missed Steve, missed him vividly to the point of aftershocks. She knows of hearing the saying to not look for something once it is lost, that it will come to you when it is ready. She thinks she has heard this about love too and finds that both in this situation are particularly true. She spent many years looking for that photo only to have it handed to her by another. And falling in love? That happened to her when it was something that she had never even thought of, something she never bothered reading about. Not when she was a child, not when she was craving armored skin and metal clashing with metal.

 

Bruce nods his head as Diana doesn’t take her eyes off of him. “Why do you want to know so bad Mr.Wayne? Are you looking for my weakness? Something that you can put in my box? Don’t think that I do not know of the secrets that you keep.”

 

Diana knows of the boxes that lay in Bruce’s possession, each one with the secret to take down any one of them. Different metas’ symbols on each box, meticulously crafted and filled with everything that Bruce can find on them. She knows that her box remains empty, that Bruce is convinced there is no weakness that lays within her.

 

But Diana thinks otherwise. She remembers her anger, how she held a tank above her head, ready to destroy.

 

She wants to tell Bruce if she could bottle up the last 100 years then she would put them in that box, because she is the one that walked away from mankind, she is the one that turned her back because she thought that mankind was beyond saving. Because she fought the god of war but war still plagued man because nothing loves death the way war does. Diana knows what it is like to watch months decay, to watch time ravage, seen violent bright ends.

 

It is a very intimate grief that is caged within her heart.

 

She sighs at the idea, there is no point to dwell on it, on the things that could have been. What matters is now, that she keeps moving forward, and moving forward is a voyage. Instead she remains silent and lets Bruce believe that she is invincible.

 

“How are you finding time to do all of this with the rebuilding of Metropolis?” She changes the subject, anything to get their minds off the unspoken things that they weave between them.

 

“I’m not, I’m further behind than I want to be on searching for the metas. There’s a small fishing town, thousands of miles from here, that I believe one of our metas is at. I just don’t know when I’ll be able to leave when there’s all these functions and fundraisers.” Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed as he knits his eyebrows together.

 

To Diana this is the first time that he truly looks human and is not carrying just the weight of the mask on his shoulders. It is the first time she has seen this business side of Bruce, and not something darker.

 

“I could help, with Wayne Enterprises I mean. I would be good at a fundraiser.” Diana smiles her most charming smile at Bruce who is now looking at her curiously, his hand falling away from his face.

 

“Really? You’re not worried that-”

 

“I do not have a fear of anyone discovering who I am if that’s what you are trying to say. Besides, I said I was going to help you find these metas, there is a threat coming and if this is how we have to be prepared then so be it.” Even to her own ears she sounds convincing.

 

Bruce is reluctant but she knows that his need to find the others outweighs everything else. She knows the strings that she pulls and she tries not to feel a snag of guilt at the thought of using this to her advantage. She tries to think of it as tactical, that this is just a battlefield and she is working her way across the mine riddled land.

 

“That would be,” Bruce takes a brief pause, looking for the right word to use, “helpful.” He settles on it and actually feels like he means it. He is so used to always hiding different words behind his teeth that he surprises himself at the truth of it.

 

Diana smiles. “I will leave the jet setting up to you this time around.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can follow me on tumblr at worthyironman


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